Big Staff News for the Jerusalem Bureau

We're excited to announce two big moves for the Jerusalem bureau. After leading Times coverage of American politics through the last campaign, David Halbfinger is returning for a second tour in Israel as our next bureau chief. And Isabel Kershner, our stalwart in the bureau, will take on a new role as senior correspondent, working with David to help manage the operation.

They are uniquely positioned to lead this large and dynamic group, which is at the center of one of the most pivotal stories in the world. It takes a rare set of leadership, management and journalistic skills, as our previous bureau chief, Patrick Kingsley , demonstrated so well.

David brings them in spades. In returning to Jerusalem, David will offer both a fresh perspective after being away and the experience needed to hit the ground running.

He embarked on his first stint as Jerusalem bureau chief in 2017 near the start of the first Trump administration. Soon afterward, he jumped in to cover the protests set off by the move of the U.S. embassy and a subsequent crackdown by the Israeli military, including by leading a collaborative, months-long investigation into the killing of a volunteer Palestinian medic. David covered Benjamin Netanyahu's indictment in 2019 and the multiple elections that followed, culminating in a deep dive on his downfall when he lost the fourth. And David's project on life under occupation captured the emotional toll taken on people from all corners of Palestinian society.

The prospect of another Israeli election will play to David's strengths. As Politics editor since 2021, he assembled a powerhouse team of more than 45 journalists who dominated coverage of one of the most tumultuous campaign cycles in modern American history, with the If Trump Wins investigative series, deeply reported pieces from inside the campaigns and comprehensive analysis of the issues . This year, David has overseen a series of insightful pieces on the depths of the Democratic Party's troubles as it hopes for a comeback.

David will be joining a bigger bureau than the one he left four years ago but he'll benefit from a renewed partnership with a colleague who has been a familiar presence in our report for nearly two decades. Isabel Kershner joined The Times in Jerusalem as a correspondent in 2007, just two years before Mr. Netanyahu made a comeback after a long break in the political wilderness. He has dominated the news cycle, and her sleep patterns, ever since, and now our readers will benefit in new ways from the expertise she has built over the years.

Isabel covered multiple wars, rounds of peace talks and elections, as well as politics and life on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian lines. She investigated the history and quiet authorization of the rogue settler outposts in the occupied West Bank; charted Israel's experience as a living laboratory for the Covid vaccine; examined the transformation of bomb shelters into death traps during the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attack that set off the Gaza war; and captured the grief of a Druze community in the Golan Heights after 12 children were killed by a missile from Lebanon.

She has also searched for the original burning bush ; written of both a matrimonial tuxedo-and-lace rebellion in Israel and a mass Palestinian wedding in Nablus; and noted the relationship between hieroglyphics and emojis as well as efforts to make the Hebrew language more gender inclusive . Isabel is the author of two books: "Barrier: The Seam of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict" and "The Land of Hope and Fear: Israel's Battle for Its Inner Soul."

Please join us in congratulating David and Isabel.

- Phil, Adrienne and Yara